Two Smudde siblings. One blog. No apologies.

Tag Archives: Rogue Trader

So writing has been my new big hobby. I am now running two campaigns and write in one of two blogs each week. I am slowly drafting a real book or novella. I am in the middle of Story by Robert McKee, a book about crafting story and making the most of your words.

I was bound to encounter this writers block I kept hearing about. And its proving a difficult thing to overcome! Specifically I’m encountering this with the Rogue Trader campaign. I have a ton of content written up already and is just waiting for me to flesh out, but the last story arc of the campaign is eluding me. I’ve work-shopped it a couple times, and the ideas are pretty alright, but I’m having quite a time trying to fill out interesting and unique quests.

Past posts I’ve made have put forward the strong ideas I have about narrative and goals in story writing. My goals for the Rogue Trader campaign are to have a campaign that my players have a vested interest in, and I always want it to be actionable by the players. The moment that I run a campaign and I’ve talked for more than five minutes I feel like I’ve failed. Its a role playing game, and I never want to have my players become bored listening to me talk.

I want to keep my players engaged, and much like a video game, I keep trying to play to their innate desires as characters and players. Players want to have fun and do things while their characters can have fun, emotional arcs through the story. My players with few exceptions give me very little to work on that front. I’ve asked them for more to work with and I’ve begun role-playing exercises meant to try and make them think about their characters in complex ways. However, this has availed me very little.

I press on though, and that’s suitable. I feel like I’ve blown through all of my unique ideas though. The remaining ideas I have for quests don’t align or link up to form grand, overarching ideas. It feels mishmashed and I hate it. The quests I want to write have interconnecting threads, themes, and motivations that make sense and are possible.

I don’t want to fill in the blanks with meaningless filler just to navigate towards something I want to do. Tools like that cheapen the effect I’m going for.

I hate NPC’s that have emotions or motivations that translate to “convenient for the GM.” Having combat encounters for the sake of keeping the players entertained is almost always a poor idea, at least in Rogue Trader. If I have a hive gang attack because they are looking to score some cash, the players will assume that they must’ve been sent by somebody.

I can’t really elaborate on the questline I need to flesh out because one to two of my players read this and it would be wiiiiiiiiild spoilers. I have some cool moments I want to navigate through and I don’t want to rob them of the experience.

There are a number of things I’ve read about doing to try and clear my problem but it doesn’t feel like it works.

Keep writing anyway. Stuck on one part? Write another until the problem clears itself up!

My issue is that my next big hurdle is campaign order and structure. Which quests happen in which order. Since I don’t even know what the individual quests hold, I can’t even do placeholders! Maybe I’m over thinking it?

Back up and try something else. Write a bunch of scenarios and see which one is the best!

This has failed me. All the scenarios I write feel like they lose something personal and begin to feel like filler. If a scene or an act doesn’t have a premise and a meaningful conclusion I feel like its pointless. Now I get as a role-playing game these things can be fun because the players make it their own but all I keep coming up with is “Go to location. Do the thing. Return.”

But its Rogue Trader so I need to try and write things in such a way that the players don’t fly away out of boredom or blow it all to hell. This is why Dark Heresy is the #1 Warhammer 40k system: there are no fucking spaceships.

Don’t try and jump in and write. Make the outline, then the draft, then write it.

I love this one, and its how I actually usually write my quests. This is what I’ve been currently trying but since I’m stuck with even the core idea of the quest line I still feel stuck, even when I begin to list out segments and settings.

On top of all of this: the campaign is continually marching on. I can’t take a month to work on it since my players expect to play every other Saturday. And if I take a month off to work on it, something else will fill that RPG void and I’ll lose my platform to run my campaign.

I acknowledge that I’m probably wildly overthinking this. My difficult has always been brainstorming and coming up with ideas. I’ve never felt deeply creative. Many of my friends are an endless font of inspiration and ideas, but I feel like I struggle to even come up with set pieces.

My players are finally on the trail of the story at large. I’m hoping this is the event that kicks my brain into gear. I usually produce good work at the eleventh hour. I learned this in college- all nighters were my bread and butter. I don’t want to work that way, but we will certainly see what happens.

This isn’t one of my posts digging at the bottom of my existentialism, but its definitely a lovely trip to the shoreline of my wandering thoughts. Let’s have a picnic!

I’m still searching for the thing I want to be doing. Not sure what I want to do, or what exactly I want it to do for me, but I definitely feel like I’m searching for my next big thing.

So I’m about to GM my 15th session of Rogue Trader. That is nearly three times as long as my first attempt at GMing. But I think I’ve found my groove- I’ve know what I want the campaign to be, I’ve learned what systems work best for my players, and I’ve compiled the tools I need to keep the campaign at a nice, semi-immersive level.

I really want to keep doing this. When I’m in the right rhythm, and my players are nice and interactive, its a lot of fun.

It’s been giving me an outlet I didn’t even know I needed. I’m a daydreamer. I listen to music and think about cool moments or short little tidbits. And I’ve always done this- in fact, if I listen to a lot of music I used to listen to when I was young I remember what I used to daydream about.

So running a Rogue Trader campaign has sort of made me evaluate the idea that maybe I want to be a story teller. Maybe I should write a book, or pursue GMing professionally, or perhaps try and become a game designer.

It’s also made me wonder whether it would be fun to be an actor/voice actor. I have a lot of fun play acting the characters. Practicing their voices, writing their stories, and trying to really refine how they feel. During Rogue Trader I really want my NPC’s to come across like living, breathing characters.

So writing and acting both sound like a lot of fun. But now I have to learn to write and act.

And its going to be hard. It takes years to get truly good at these things and I get discouraged that I’m discovering these things so late in life. I did my time in college, and now I have to start over.

But I mean- that’s what I wanted to find. Something that I wanted to do and I’m willing to start on the ground and work my way up. I’ve been getting books on writing, and listening to podcasts and stuff. I just have to start actually doing it.

I need more time in the day. I need to take the time to take the time. Things are hard, but the hard things are worth doing.

I’ve always envied you Emily. You have maintained a focus on yourself and your goals your entire life. You’ve been falling down holes for years. And luckily its usually the same hole!

My hobbies shift with the times. I get really into various things for like a year or two and then I move to something else. Well recently I sold off the majority of my Magic cards. I also traded in a huge portion of my Batman comics because I just couldn’t keep up. Last year I was in an in between phase when I decided to run a Rogue Trader RPG campaign.

Its probably my only solid hobby right now. I am reading for entertainment less, I’m not getting through my video game backlog, and I have essentially stopped watching shows. I fancy myself an ‘immersive GM,’ so I spend my time writing what I hope are interesting settings, quests, and enemies.

I bring all of this up not to brag but to emphasize how much time I spend on this. I’m always thinking about it, planning for it, and writing down ideas and quest lines. Most evenings after work I probably sit down and write at least a little bit. I agonize over it, but I really love it. It’s fun and satisfying!

But Emily, I back-flip down holes. I throw myself into whatever my current hobby is hard.

So I decided I’m going to run a Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition campaign for my work. Some of my coworkers will get to be players in their very first campaign. I’m going to have to write a campaign that’s not only exciting, but introduces these people to the campaign setting. On top of all of that, the quest line needs to slowly teach them how to play the game.

One campaign was sucking up a huge portion of my time. Now I’ve agreed to two! I’m going the distance.

Did I mention I’ve never officially run a Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition campaign before? So I need to learn how to GM it like a boss.

You may occasionally trip and fall into a hole Emily. And its refreshing to see someone so dedicated to their self and their hobbies. But I’ve never been known to trip. My hobbies go too fast and hard for me to nurture them appropriately over the course of years. So if I’m going to full enjoy a hobby, the only way I know how is to overload the machine and shove the whole damn thing into a hole.

And then I’m falling; surrounded by the elements of my work. Running two campaigns, and potentially three blogs at one time? Sometimes you see the the ground rushing up to meet you and all you can do is point and scream:

I was very worried because it was going to suck. They had gone to a planet the previous session and then they were beset by a colossal creature from the clouds. The Creature on Rain.

It was a perfect storm of unpreparedness, bad rolls, poor choices, and differing priorities.

As always: from the top.

When I had unleashed my party on the Koronus Expanse several of the players had interest in just sailing out into the infinite void and finding amazing things. No matter how I explained it they never quite figured out that they can just sail into the void and discover systems. So instead they took to information gathering: looking for rumors and discoveries that they could go and plunder.

As the GM I pointed out some “well known” planets. These planets have legends surrounding them. One was Burnscour, a planet just impossibly chock-full of shit that will kill you. The expansion known as the Koronus Bestiary talks about vicious xenos creatures you can encounter, and a good chunk come from this single death world.

Another I posited was the planet Rain. It used to have a settlement on it, but eventually a message was received from the planet. I abridged the message to: “they are coming. They are coming from the Rain.” The planets colonies and population all vanished. The book itself gives one paragraph as to what happened, enough to get a proper GM going.

I took what I found and created a monster fit to kill everyone who ever came to the planet.

The players weren’t exactly chomping at the bit to go, but they definitely made the comment that they want to eventually.

Back to the players. Every time they were on Port Footfall, the character Zarko would search for information regarding alien worlds with valuable artifacts. Befitting of his backstory, I would start to seed in some hooks.

Enter another player, Brute Wang, had helped the player look around for rumors, maps, or coordinates. Over the course of a couple sessions Brute rolled well enough to forge a map that led to Rain. Not by name, just by location. Rain is a pretty infamous and feared location in the Koronus Expanse, and with the help of an NPC Chaotic was easily able to glean the coordinates.

Eventually Chaotic planted this map on a hooker. The hooker eventually encountered the Rogue Trader in the party and gave him the map, who he then gave the map the Zarko. They both rolled to see if the map was legit, failed spectacularly, and the map was deemed trustworthy.

They took the map to their Navigator who said he could take them there. I prompted everyone to roll Common Lore: Koronus Expanse. The coordinates are fairly well regarded since no one returns.

Not a single players who could have learned that lore by now bothered to take it. I guess they were all concerned with getting their stats higher.

So they went to Rain. And the very moment they entered the Warp to travel there I knew I was going to have to kill them.

They arrived at the planet, gave it a cursory scan, and landed near three abandoned research posts. They had all been torn apart during a previous attack as everyone tried to flee. The players reactivated three vox communication arrays and the final message was relayed as an S.O.S.

“They are coming. They are coming from the Rain.”

In between relaying that message and the attack itself I had to prepare for the next session. A session where they would all die unless they were tremendously lucky.

I wanted it to be drawn out. I wanted to evoke hopelessness and futility. I definitely did not want this to be fun.

I can’t say too much about the Creature, but it vastly overwhelmed them. It had the ability to send out smaller versions of itself. They manifested as flyers, or the slower husk forms that were humanoid in appearance. The players promptly made a break for it, but their ship was low enough in orbit to be sensed by the Creature. Half the party made it back to the ship and blitzed for the command deck. They all started individually being pulled down and suffocated- with the pilot and the navigator finally succumbing near the deck itself.

The second half of the party made it onto the ship but were overwhelmed by the smaller creatures that spawned. They all died. Zarko was the final one to succumb.

I had them all one by one turn their character sheets face down. I wanted to have a discussion. A talk about what they are doing and how they ended up here. The party isn’t working together. There are no discussions. Half of my players just sit idly by while the other half makes decisions for them. Decisions that got them killed.

Granted some of my players aren’t present all the time, but as the GM it did not look to me like this party should even still be together. I had wrongly guessed that I could unite them with a rescue job when we started, but none of my players seem to have made any effort to really learn or interact with other characters. Hell, one of the players had forged the damn map.

I’m sure that if I voiced this to the players many would protest, but talking about your characters as players is not the same as characters talking with other characters. I falsely believed that we could have a party where there was no established leadership, but it was brought up that it was likely needed. I had thought my players would be willing to speak up, deliberate, plan, and work together. They don’t do this that often. I have a couple of serious roleplayers, a couple of wannabe-power gamers, and couple people who are just there to hang out.

They lack self preservation, aren’t taking skills they could be using, and are presently aware that they are just numbers on a page. I’m not going to sit down and chide them for playing how they want to play but they dove in headfirst into a TPK without research or preparation.

They asked no one on port whether they recognized this map. They failed their checks yes, but even if I say “the map looks legit” doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do more research. That’s where the “its a game” aspect comes into my players minds. They don’t need to research. Its a game so self preservation is worried about when its needed.

I’m debating having a structured conversation about this with them. I think having all died once will make them take more deliberate steps with things. We shall see. Hopefully the TPK is a shake up and gives them a banner to unite under.

I ended up saving them. One of their NPC’s had unparalleled connection with the Warp and used her own life force to push the Creature’s daemonic consciousness away. She ended up dying as the cost of bailing them out.

It’s almost fitting that this post follows my previous one debating what to do about my players inaction.

So Pretzel just glanced at my screen and burst out laughing. So for those who do not know: murder hobos.

Murder hobos is a slang term for Dungeons and Dragons adventurers. You are a murder hobo because traditionally the players go from town to town killing people. A vagrant that walks into town, kills the local problem, and rides off into the sunset.

My players killed approximately 100,000 people in one stroke. So my players are winning this unspoken competition.

As always: the explanation. My players were sent to a planet owned by another Rogue Trader. A queen from one of the kingdoms had recently been kidnapped and she wished to return to the feudal world kingdom to save her daughter. When she attempted to return to the planet herself her reemergence from a space ship sent the populous into an uproar. So she hires some intrepid explorers to go in and retrieve her daughter.

Stuff happens. They manage to infiltrate the capital city where the castle is located (and presumably the princess) but the problem came when they had to escape. The riotous mob had located them and it was a long, dramatic gunfight through a dense city. Seven explorers doing combat with approximately 50,000 angry civilians. It was a very tense ending to the session.

When my players returned to their ship, they silently agreed to destroy the city entirely. They lowered their 8 kilometer ship into orbit and blasted the city into a black smear ala Rogue One.

I was really enjoying the session! My players, for the first time, we’re working together as a unit. They understood the risks and we’re working to make sure that everyone passed tests as a group. I was very excited.

Then they committed genocide. Now- it makes sense. It was an emotional reaction to what they had just escaped. The session was supposed to end on a juxtaposition of a reunited family against the burning capital city below.

What I found curious, and on some levels worrisome, is that they all just allowed this to happen. There was no deliberation over the event. There wasn’t a discussion about what the super advanced race of people should do. They showed up as angry gods and delivered an apocalypse from the sky.

So an emotional reaction- which is fine. But without anyone asking questions are debating what course of action should be taken, will they understand any repercussions I deliver against them in the next session? I don’t jump in to remind them of things when they do discuss action together because I want them to ask questions. I cannot expect them to know the universe, but on some level their characters do.

Should their be a penalty for them not asking, “What would happen if-?”

Realistically here’s what should happen:

The players failed to scan the system so they did not notice the reclamation satellites in the system, and more importantly the Aquila Magnificus located on the planet.

They knew that the planet was owned by another Rogue Trader. They did not investigate who owned the planet at the time and did not ask what this Rogue Trader might do with a feudal world. Things that some of their characters likely know, but they didn’t think to ask I suppose.

Now in their defense they didn’t know the city would rise against them and chase them through the city. Killing civilians in self defense would not have warranted more than a miffed Rogue Trader. Which I’m sure is what they thought when they vaporized the city. But they also didn’t ask me, “Will they know?”

So given the circumstances.

Do I give them a break as the GM and gloss over this or do I do what should happen.

So killing approximately 100,000 people is obviously a cruel retribution. And there is no way that the crew of their ship will be quiet about this when they return to Port Footfall. So word will get out.

The Aquila Magnificus is a dedicated beacon that summons the Ecclesiarchy. The Ecclesiarchy are the arm of the Imperium that spreads the Imperial Creed. Similar to religious missionaries.. And a mysterious ship came and destroyed a huge part of their flock that was promised them.

So the Ecclesiarchy will be furious, and the Rogue Trader will essentially be out a lot of money. Word gets out on Port Footfall. Rich people grease some palms and the party will be discovered probably within 3 months.

It will likely be a much shorter time before that Rogue Trader knows. Days I’d bet. I know this because of super secret GM stuff, but the players will be finding out in the next session.

I’m not sure yet what I should do. I don’t want to seem “unfair” because essentially to many of my players it will likely feel like I’m abusing my power as the GM to promote my agenda of not killing 100,000 people per session. They didn’t ask me questions so they did not have a clear vision of what would happen.

Will they blame me for not telling them ahead of time? Is it my duty to tell them ahead of time?

But at the same time the universe should feel like it has a real world feel to it with real repercussions for player actions.

Maybe not verbatim but definitely that meaning. They were done doing stuff and were ready for whatever I had in store.

This really disheartened me. And in some ways it confused me.

During my last post I talked about how they finished the first quest and they were free to roam the Koronus Expanse. And I was really excited about this because it means I didn’t have to railroad them. I didn’t have to explicitly control what they do.

I wanted them to feel slightly underpowered in the beginning. I gave each of them a boon (kinda like a wish) and they each got some totally bitching archeotech (analogous to magical items) equipment. So now they are powerful, they are much richer, with a spaceship that they had to work together to protect.

It also meant that I could slow down the missions and take more time to write them since my players have the option of fucking off around the Koronus Expanse. I prepared a lot of star systems to explore so that there were real things they could encounter.

I wrote missions and populated a job board for them with options. Quests they could take to represent people coming to the party and looking for explorers to hire.

I prepared a lot for the first session of freedom in the Expanse. We sat down and I presented them with their badass equipment. I was eager to see what they wanted to do. After most of an hour they all sort of just looked at me.

“We’re ready for whatever.”

I-

What?

You can do whatever you want? I’m taking my hands of the wheel for the first time. Does no one have anything they want to do? I think in the moment my façade broke and my exasperation showed. Not a single player in seven had something they wanted to pursue. The players talk a lot but I was hoping this was the moment that character building moments and events could take place.

After I prompted them they finally decided on a mission. But I’ve been thinking about that moment all week.

Maybe the issue is that the world is too big? The ‘blue sky’ problem definitely comes up. When someone comes up to you and says, “You can do whatever you want!” you get far more intimidated and stumped than when someone says, “Choose A or B.”

A bit of it must be that the people aren’t familiar with the Universe. And there isn’t shit I can do about that. The lore is all available but I’m not going to demand that they read it all.

Also the fact that its a sci-fi universe is more difficult as well. Dungeons and Dragons should just be called “Familiar and Safe Tolkien Fantasy Tropes.” Its way easier to function in DnD campaign because its much smaller in scope. A sci fi universe typically involves spaceships and galaxies. You don’t have magic to rely on, you have to get clever with your thinking and how you use technology.

Part of the opening missions was teaching them about the various things that can be done. How to information gather, negotiate, evaluate stuff. I was hoping that would carry over but maybe they thought the only reason we were doing this was for a specific events. I suppose I can still be explicit about what needs to be done but I want to put currency back in the players hands by pitting them against interesting challenges. If I write the challenge and then prompt them on how to beat it its less satisfying for them.

I think in my effort to teach everyone first and let them free second I’ve accidentally set up a standard of “you don’t need to do anything because its all preordained.”

On another level I think that some of the players aren’t really fully invested. No one asked me to run a campaign because they wanted one. I decided to run one and asked who wanted to play. And that distinction is important.

Ellis is going to run a Dungeons and Dragons 5.0 campaign and some players seem to be much more excited. They are really diving into the rule books and looking at how their character is going to develop. This is a campaign that people asked Ellis to do, so they are far more excited.

This isn’t a bad thing but I think my Rogue Trader campaign isn’t necessarily a huge deal. Saturdays (when we play) isn’t necessarily “we play Rogue Trader on Saturdays” as much as it is “we all hang out on Saturday and play Rogue Trader.” It seems the same when its written but the difference is that for some of my players they don’t care if we play or not. Hanging out is what we do on Saturdays. They don’t look forward to playing Rogue Trader, they look forward to hanging out.

Hell, one of my players brought board games to play when he came to session on Saturday “in case we didn’t play.”

In the end we have fun and that’s what I prioritize. I have fun and I think most of my players do. Their personal engagement might not align with mine but in a group of seven players its probably hard for all of them to be on the same page. Writing for Rogue Trader has been a fun and unique challenge. Learning to manage my players and expectations will just be a new challenge.

And don’t get me wrong, some of my players get really invested in certain scenarios and that’s so much fun for me to write for. Its a mixed bag but hopefully with time everything will be sculpted into a deep, rich campaign.

Rogue Trader is an RPG system set in the 40k Universe. The primary setting is the Koronus Expanse; a vast region of space beyond the Halo Stars. It sits behind two great Warp storms: the Screaming Vortex and the Void Dancer’s Roil. The gap between the two is known at the Maw. What makes the Koronus Expanse the primary place setting is that until recently it had been lost.

Faster than light travel involves entering an alternate dimension known as the Immaterium, more commonly known as the Warp. A realm made of emotion made manifest and an infinite number of daemons.

The route through the Maw into the Koronus Expanse was re-discovered within the last two or so hundred years. It’s an entire segmentum of the galaxy with hundreds of millions of planets for the taking. The players play as a party of explorers under the helm of a person known as a Rogue Trader. A Rogue Trader has been granted the right to represent and claim planets and territories in the name of the God-Emperor of humanity.

So go explore and have fun!

So naturally I did not start my group in the Koronus Expanse. I started them in the Calixis Sector. I have seven players and five of them have never played Rogue Trader, it’s a brand new d10 system they need to learn, and the classes do not translate straight across to fantasy (i.e. there is no designated ‘tank’ or ‘healer).

I wanted to start my party in the Calixis Sector because its a much easier place to introduce the world. It’s a part of the galaxy under the influence of the Imperium of Man. I never liked the “you all meet serendipitously” method of starting a campaign- so I like to start them in a “you’ve all been hired for X” plan.

Writing the ‘Opening Mission’ was the most difficult thing I’ve written by far. Mostly because I wanted to introduce almost all of the mechanics of the game to them. Combat, Space combat, interaction challenges, exploration challenges, covert ops challenges, space travel, warp travel, investigation, purchasing personal things, outfitting the ship, entering and exiting port, etc…

So I wrote an escort mission. My players began on the Hive World (industrial/labor planets) of Gunpoint and they commandeered a ship that was provided for them and they set off. A lot more happens in between missions but the short hand goes like thus:

The players were assembled on the planet Gunpoint. They were briefed: they had to go to a penal planet of Sheol XVII. They needed to escape Gunpoint, however, because there were armed men hunting them. They were promptly ambushed but managed to escape. Once upon their ship they fled the planet. The first mate aboard the ship was named Havoc, and he explained a little more of the situation. They made their way to Sheol XVII. Having duped a pair of ‘police’ ships, they got inside the planets perimeter. They picked up a man named Killian Rage. Havoc and Killian Rage go way back, having known each other for several decades.

Killian explained that Sarvus Trask, a prominent Rogue Trader, was hunting him. Sarvus betrayed Killian; he used him as a scapegoat for a political deal and had him imprisoned as a sign of good faith. So now Killian Rage is attempting to return to the Koronus Expanse and Sarvus is trying to stop him.

Once they escape Sheol XVII they go to the feral world Endrite to raid a facility belonging to Trask. They successfully make it planetside, make their way on foot to the facility, and raid it for all of the supplies. Unfortunately though, the supplies that were supposed to outfit their ship were merely cleaning chemicals.

They then went to Thical, a prominent hive world near the Maw. They went to fence the stolen goods but they were met with a counter proposal from their agent: retrieve my stolen valuable thing and I’ll pay you well. The players expertly infiltrated the facility and found the relic, but had to chase the men down to retrieve it. They returned it to the agent who paid them and re-supplied their ship.

As they were about to leave Thical Sarvus Trask found them. In the final days of the re-supply he encountered and captured Havoc in the city. Amassing a fighting force, he appeared suddenly, murdered Havoc in front of them, and stormed the players ship on the dock. It was a fight for their ship and their freedom. It also turned out that their one time ally had been paid to turn on them and dealt a serious blow to the ship. During the battle several players were critically wounded including Killian Rage who had his left arm completely chopped off.

They escaped after repulsing Sarvus Trask and fled to Port Wander, the final stop this side of the Maw. On Wander they got their ship re-supplied, hired a new crew, and fixed their broken components. Once ready, they plunged through the Maw into the Koronus Expanse. Port Footfall is the stop on the far side of the Maw. Once on port, Killian introduces them to his old flames father, Zulfikar Raheem, who pays them handsomely.

And then Killian leaves, unsure whether he’ll ever see the party again.

So a lot of this mission was a “connect the dots” sort of mission that allowed me to teach my players the various components of being alive and in the 40k universe. A lot of this was just me being like, “Hey, this could be totally cool.”

But a small portion of the missions were me reconciling my last campaign that was a failure because I had never GM’ed before. My first campaign as GM was fun but it got super duper turbo derailed because I didn’t understand how to tell the story.

Killian Rage was an NPC pirate lord in my first campaign. For me, and I think for my players, he was one of the popular elements in the campaign. So I began having him show up just to keep interest high and to give them a “Team Rocket” sort of half-antagonist. He was eventually killed by the party.

Killian Rage represents me in the campaign they are currently playing in. I gave him no voice, I made him very Mary Sue, and he didn’t talk much but he always knew or had just what the party needed (because I am the GM). His plan to get them to the Koronus Expanse was a representation of my first campaign and how it goes terribly wrong. Killian assumed it would be really easy since he knows everything he needs to but doesn’t consider that others will act in ways he can’t predict. My players behaved in ways I didn’t predict.

Sarvus Trask kills his blood brother Havoc in front of him and Killian becomes ‘disarmed.’ He literally lost his left arm when Sarvus Trask cut it off, a nod to my loss of control from the first campaign, and his brother Havoc was killed in front of him, a nod to Killian dying in the first campaign. And when Killian lost Havoc he was lost without him- a feeling I felt when Killian was killed in the first campaign.

So the ‘Opening Mission’ ends with Killian introducing the party to Zulfikar Raheem. Zulfikar agrees to pay the party when he learns that Killian lost Havoc. Zulfikar had a daughter once, but she fell in love with Killian and left with him to go on adventures. She never returned, and Zulfikar blames Killian for her absence.

So when Killian returns asking for a favor (that he knows he has no right to ask) Zulfikar only grants that favor when he learns that Killian is experiencing the same grief that he is. He pays them, but as a mockery to Killian. As Killian is leaving the facility, unsure of his future in the Koronus Expanse, he dons Havoc’s blood stained cloak and leaves.

The mockery and departure of Killian, and generous payment to the players, is a reminder to myself that this campaign is happening because of the mistakes I made in the first one. I learned from my experience and here we are now. My first one was a confused mess but it makes me a better GM for my players now.

My players are here, they’ve earned their wings, and now I don’t need to escort them anymore.

I feel like this campaign is already way better than the first. For instance, people actually liked Killian as an NPC. I even had an instance of a player conversing with him in character. That last session where they make it to Footfall and Killian leaves- I have been told was a really good session by a few and in one instance a players favorite they’ve ever been in.

That makes me smile to think about. I think I have a lot of room to grow as a GM in this campaign and I look forward to it. So yeah, I feel better about this campaign. Especially now where we get to the point where its really easy to lose control. But I’m ready.